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Ha! take that!! Harry Williams, who also claimed to have introduced the term "Tilt" after he heard a patron say he had tilted his "Advance" machine. Clearly the patron had seen a machine with a tilt mech before and Harry had not.

As my name indicates, early coin-operated amusements are not my primary area of research. That said, it appears that Marblo game is not from 1931, but rather from 1935. Automatic Age has an ad for it in the February 1935 issue (https://aa.arcade-museum.com/Automatic- ... 02-077.pdf), and its clearly a brand new game at that time. This also makes sense based on other evidence. The Pacific Amusement nameplate on the Marblo lists a Chicago location, which I am almost certain did not exist before the company began manufacturing Contact. I am also suspicious that PamCo did not even exist yet in 1931, but I have not done enough research to state that definitively.

As for the rest, it does appear that Advance was not the first pinball game with a tilt to appear. I don't think that necessarily makes Williams a liar (or "embellisher" to be less antagonistic about it). Both of those games were released in pretty close proximity to Advance and by companies located in the Midwest. Its entirely plausible that Williams had not seen either game yet on the West Coast when he came up with the idea. I mean, that still makes him wrong, but perhaps not in a deliberately deceitful way. Of course, an even earlier machine may still appear considering how little hard research has been done on the period.

Thanks for your input, videogamehistorian.
You may well be correct. Although The International Arcade Museum and PinballHistory.com date Marblo to 1931, the Internet Pinball Database says that Pacific Amusement Manufacturing Company existed from 1932-1937.

And, yes, it would be wrong to assume Harry Williams was lying. As you say, such things can be independently reinvented. It's also easy to assimilate and incorporate ideas, then years later forget where they came from, and assume they were yours. We all do it, I'm sure.

I don't see any recent updates on They Create Worlds. I hope the project is still progressing.

Edit to add: Bally's payout pinball Rocket of 1933 had a more advanced anti-tilt mechanism than the above. It pevented cheating by breaking the payout circuit.

Reviving the dead here, I have two anti-tilt things to add!

At some point. D Gottlieb added an anti-tilt to his Husky Grip tester. This seems odd, but it was due to the machine registering the tilt as a coin being inserted, presumably due to the type of weight mechanism being used. This is the earliest example I've yet found of a 'tilt' in those words, though I have to imagine mechanisms existed before that and maybe were described differently. (Automatic Age 1929-06 pg 40, 42)

A more familiar version of the tilt appears right before pinball in Keeney's Three Jacks, a penny drop game. It doesn't exactly describe how the prevention works but it specifically advertises that it doesn't have to be bolted to the counter, implying this used to be a very pervasive problem. (Automatic Age 1930-03 pg 38)

1905 German "Hopp Hopp" by Hoffmann/Polter closes a curtain in case of tilt....
https://alte-spielautomaten.de/automaten/hopp-hopp/
Mechanism using a weight and some cords:

That's extraordinary!

pennymachines wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:45 pm That's extraordinary!

These type of machines seemed to be from another dimension. They use a lot of specials.

This is a cashbox from a early machine (like "Zeppelin" and others):

Compare it with a Polter cashbox from same age......Box locked when tilt!!! :

What am I missing here? What was the point of locking the cash box on "tilt"? Did they think the offender was going to turn the machine over and shake it!!

Maybe a sales gimmick intended to sway the less savvy potential purchasers. "Look, this game is safer than the Bank of England! It locks up your money at the first hint of cheating."

J Peterson
Locked up in America

Possibly.
It might also be to slow down any sticky fingered mechanic visiting to repair or unjam an out of order machine.

My favourite "stitch up" was a Friday Lunch in my pub in The West End.
The busiest session of the week, and as usual we were heaving.
Suddenly amidst the hoard of punters waving empty glasses and £10 notes appeared two geezers in overalls and flat caps.
Pushing a sack barrow in front of them they merrily took chunks out of my customers' ankles.
Getting to the front they thrust a clip board under my nose as I was feverishly pulling pints. While levering Bass into four glasses (one with an 'andle) doing ongoing mental arithmetic, £9.12p. I was repeating the rest of the order as it was given to me " two dry white wines, no make one of them a red, a pint of Heineken, no make that two, I mean a pint and a half ......"
In the middle of that lot I recall hearing the flat cap telling me they were changing the fruit machine, order of the brewery, here's the paperwork.

An hour and a half later while collecting empty glasses I was impressed to see that originally my carpet had been bright red, I'd only ever seen it as brown before. However there in the corner where there should have been a JPM fruit machine was a three feet square of shiny carpet.

BP

Billard type table game with payout. Patented 1907 for Automatenwerke GmbH Hamburg.
If you lift (tilt) the cabinet, a massive block of lead moves and locks the payout system.